Monday, January 31, 2011

She was this size. Just sleeping peacefully. Not disturbing anyone. With that wonderful, new baby smell. You just wanted to squeeze her tight. Only if you really did that stuff tended to come out at one or both ends.

Too much information?

Now Bethany Benny Boo Noodle Shoe Queen has left the ranks of teenagers. She is bright. She is smart as a whip. She loves math.

Wait a minute. She loves MATH. Is she really my child? She is actually a math major by CHOICE?

{{{{{{{Shivers}}}}}}}

She has an absolutely wicked sense of humor that just slays me. She is always sending me band names that she has come up with. One of the latest ones is

And now………INADVERTENT NAPTIME!!!! Singing their hit single “Now You’ll Never Get To Sleep On Time.”

My favorite band name is still….Crispy Liver.

Shoe Queen has her own unique sense of style. And she does love her shoes. My back still aches from unpacking all the shoes she took to school.

She has a sunny disposition. Which masks her inner turmoil.

No really she doesn’t have inner turmoil. I just threw that in for dramatic effect.

She is the youngest of three but we do have a picture or two of her growing up years

Lets stroll down memory lane shall we……….

Either she is laughing or she is “working on a gift for Mommy”. I hope it was laughter.

I am sorry but this picture just makes me melt.

I just want to squeeze her.

Look, even at an early age she was concerned with her shoes!

Hey Life With Riley, is that middle child one of yours? Looks like it but I am not sure.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

This is what I look like on a cold, snowy, Saturday morning in winter.

It is cold.

It is snowing (big storm predicted on Tuesday)

My head was cold. I finished the hat yesterday. I felt I needed to wear it.

Aren’t you glad you stopped by.

But I can tell you, my head is definitely warm.

And I can hardly wait for Monday morning when I will wear my new hat on my outside walk. Hopefully we won’t see any more coyote tracks (Friday) or hear the coyotes sing in the woods (Wednesday). That is just a bit too freaky.

But at least my head will be warm.

And I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I have taken one step towards using up some of my yarn stash, which is one of my goals this year.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Wow, it is almost the end of January. And it is time again for Quick Takes. In the immortal words of Calvin, “The days just fly”. So after you read my inane drivel below be sure to click on the pic above to be whisked, at a MUCH faster speed than the State of the Union Address, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else is doing.

And now without further ado…….

1. Remember when I mentioned last week that I have been backing up to Carbonite? Because it would really harsh my mellow if I had some kind of computer failure and couldn’t get back all the useless pictures I take.

Still…….backing…..up.

And since I was only two days away from the end of my free two week trial I just went ahead and signed up for a year (plus two free months).

Still….backing….up.

2. Max is very much enjoying the winter, as he usually does. He is very regimented in his enjoyment.

Ask to go out for the 30K time since breakfast Run outside as if he has NEVER BEEN OUTSIDE BEFORE! Stick snout in snow bank and munch on snow, preferably not of the yellow variety Run over to the ravine side of the yard and search for the possibility of deer Bark viciously because there might be deer somewhere. Run back to driveway and bark at the street. Stick snout in snow bank and eat more snow. Check to see where the Alpha Male is and if she says it is time to go in.

Squirrel!

3. I have started back knitting the never ending sweater.

Iwillnotbeintimidated. Iwillnotbeintimidated. Iwillnotbeintimidated.

It is just yarn and pointy sticks. I knit complicated patterns all the time.

For the love of Pete, Deb, snap out of it! I can do this.

4. Yesterday was hand knit sock washing day. I will admit that I throw MOST of them in the washing machine on really, really gentle and then lay them flat to dry.

Ummmmm, yeah. This is about half of my sock collection. And I have to say that I actually threw away TWO pairs of socks this year. I dispatched the first pair of socks that I ever knit. I couldn’t stand them, I never wore them, they were horrid.

They had to go.

AND I threw out a pair of socks where I had actually worn through the heel. Yes, I am sure that I could have fixed them but I decided that I would just rather knit another pair. They had gotten a lot of good use and it was time for them to go to that big sock drawer in the sky.

Looking at this picture I have decided that I need some purple socks.

And some pink socks. I know that Bonnie would tell me that I definitely need some pink socks.

5. You know what the worst part about “after the holidays” is? It is the fact that we have finally made it through all of the holiday sweets and THERE IS NOTHING GOOD AND NON-NUTRITIOUS to eat around here. Even the candy jar is running dangerously low. We are back to eating healthy all the time.

And it is SO boring.

I need a cookie.

6. HHBL and I have been watching and re-watching this video. It makes me laugh every time.

7. It is hard to believe but, as of Sunday, HHBL and I will no longer be the parents of a teenager.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “ touch the face of God.”

Ronald Reagan speaking to the nation

January 28, 1986

Funny how a few words can bring back a flood of memories. I am very much a memory driven person, as you might have guessed if you have been hangin’ around a bit. I love memories. I love celebrating memories. I love thinking about memories. It is amazing that I don’t run smack dab into more things because I am busy looking behind me at the memories.

I think that we all have some collective memories that we pull out together at times. We say to each other, “I remember that. I remember where I was.” They make us feel connected to one another in an age where we feel increasingly disconnected. Do you do that? I certainly do.

I don’t really remember where I was when JFK was shot, I was only three after all, but I do have a vague memory of watching his funeral on the black and white TV at my Amsler grandparents house. That is the first conscious collective memory that I have, and I am not even sure it is correct. I was young. And I think that when we are very young, even into teens and a bit beyond, we don’t really remember those collective memories very well. We are still looking ahead at our own lives. We are deep into our own immortality. Those kinds of things don’t really connect with us in the way that they do when we get just a bit older. When we have a spouse, a home, children, a job. When we truly become adults.

I know this is true for myself. I know that there were large historical events that played out on the national and international stage before I got to a certain age: the assassinations of JFK and MLK, the Kent State shootings (I live 20 minutes from the campus), Tiananmen Square, Mt. St. Helens eruption and so many more. It just feels like, up until the Challenger Disaster, I didn’t seem to pay that much attention.

I remember January 28, 1986 because that day I had just returned from a visit to the OB doc and had heard the baby’s heart beat for the first time (about 10 weeks). I had called Mimi when I got home to tell her that all was OK (which wasn’t true, but I didn’t know it at the time). We chatted and watched the lift off…and then that horrible moment 73 seconds into the flight. I remember looking at the TV screen and thinking that something didn’t look right. But your mind doesn’t know how to process the information. You can’t possibly imagine that the shuttle has blown up in front of your eyes. This day is intimately tied, in my mind at least, with having a miscarriage not quite two weeks later. Funny how the memories are intertwined.

I remember where I was and what I was doing for the burning of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX because I had lived not far from there and new where the compound was located.

I remember Oklahoma City. I remember worrying about The Chef’s parents who live in that area. Was her dad OK?

I remember 9/11. I remember because I had called my cousin Heather to sing her Happy Birthday and she told me to shut up and turn on the TV. She tells me to shut up rather frequently I have to say but the TV part was a new feature. I remember the inability to grasp the fact that those were big, really big, planes that were flying into the towers. The day was filled with worrying about Pilot Man and where he was in his flight schedule (no where near NYC thank goodness.), in worrying about my brother-in-law who was often in the WTC (and was at the time of the planes hitting the buildings just getting ready to go to a meeting there).

I think that we think about, rehash, relive these collective memories because they make us feel close to one another and connected in a way that we are not. We want to feel close to others when outside events, over which we have no control, rock the world in which we live. The reliving of collective memories help us to work through the pain and the uncertainty and tell us that we are not alone.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I am spending part of the afternoon doing what I do at least one a week.

Going through more boxes in my basement that we packed up a year ago in preparation for putting Chez Knit on the market.

Notice that I am still residing here at Chez Knit. Or as I like to think of it….

The Little House in The Big Woods That No One Wants To Buy.

Hmmmmmm, maybe that would be a good book title?

No?

Rats.

But I digress.

I have been busy opening boxes that I laboriously packed and labeled. And it is just like Christmas for hours on end. Because really, even though the box is labeled “Linens” that doesn’t always mean that is what is in there.

And one would think that a person such as myself, who keeps a database of books that she has read and loves spreadsheets, would know how to efficiently label boxes.

More detail would be better Deb.

Doesn’t everyone put the binoculars in with the box marked “Table Linens”. I have been looking for those all summer long. Finally!

And may I just say, in my best Dr. Phil voice…..

Deb, what were you thinkin’?

And then there was the small bunch of hangers sandwiched between some quilts. I don’t think that hangers need to be protected from a bump or two. And why are they in between the quilts? Where was my brain the day I packed that box? It certainly wasn’t on task.

And why does the dog eat snow the minute that he goes outside?

I just thought I would throw that in to see if you were paying attention.

It is Monday. Usually that is a difficult blogging day for me. I have taken two days off. The little gray cells are at rest and have no great desire to be stirred into any semblance of life. But I had to tell you about the weekend. Saturday to be exact. Specifically Saturday from about 4:10p onwards.

It was one of those kinds of experiences. And since I love to share EVERYTHING with all 3 of you who read my blatherings then here goes.

HHBL and I decided to take in a movie on Saturday afternoon. It was freezing cold and therefore we felt the need to go out into said cold to do something. We had been vacillating back and forth whether to see True Grit (which I have already seen) and The King’s Speech. HHBL, being the awesome hubby that he is, said that we could go to see The King’s Speech. Who wouldn’t want to take their wife to see a movie about a long dead king of England trying to overcome his horrific stammering problem. We got a bit of a late start out the door and so were buying our tickets just as the previews were about to begin.

Theater 9, right. This way. We toodle into theater 9, it is dark, the previews are just beginning. Thank goodness we didn’t miss them! We make the left hand turn to find seats and….

come to a screeching halt. What the heck?? The theater is really full. Really full of little elderly people munching popcorn and tuning their hearing aides. Why are all these people in my theater? Rats. And the lights are all the way down so it is a bit harder to see. But we managed. We walked up the stairs a bit and found two seats in a row. Not too bad but there were two little old ladies sitting in the seats on the aisle. We stood there and asked if the seats beyond them were saved. No? Great! So I begin to make my way to those seats. And my feet, which are trying to hurry me to that seat, come into contact with some unseen objects lurking in the dark on the floor of the theater. To wit, the little old lady’s feet and legs which she had left stretched out.

My feet are moving. Her legs are not. I come to a screeching and tottering halt.

Wooooooooooow.

I have a choice. I can fall forward, planting my face on the theater floor and possibly rupturing an eyeball or something. Not going to happen I can tell you. Or I can try to stall my forward movement until she can move her feet/legs/gigantic handbag out of the way. The other little problem was that my arms were sort of still wrapped up in my lovely alpaca wrap. I can’t wave my arms and steady myself. But I can fling myself to the left….

Right onto the little elderly woman whom I have just tripped over. AND in doing so I can also extend my hand out and plant it….

Right in the area that only her gynecologist sees.

Oh my word! I’m so sorry! Excuse me! Eeek!

I am finally in my seat, thanking the movie gods that the lights were down and most people weren’t privy to my inadvertent groping of a little old lady.

But now the problem was, after I got myself settled, I had to go to the bathroom. Rats! And there was no way in heaven that I was going to try to get back past that lady. So I held it. I am a big girl I can do this.

Just as an aside, The King’s Speech is FABULOUS!!! You must go see it. I command you!

So, after 111 minutes of movie plus another 15 minutes of previews we were finally able to exit the theater. The little old ladies, one being my gropee, let us get out first. I wonder why? And my first stop was the bathroom.

And that was when I realized that I might have another problem. I hoped it wasn’t true. I prayed it wasn’t true.

Can I ask you a question? I can? Good.

Have you ever had a bladder infection? Well I have, even though it had been a LONG time. And I remember what it feels like.

And I had that feeling again. In spades. Ratsratsratsratsrats.

I can think this away. It is just my imagination. It is just because I sat for so long without going. I will be fine. Just because I feel like I have to go again and I just went. Just my imagination.

No…..it wasn’t.

HHBL suggested that we stop at Steak & Shake on the way home to get a nutritious and highly filling Patty Melt. Excellent! All my fat intake for the week in one fell swoop. Awesome.

And while we were there….for a total of 45 minutes….I spent about 15 of that in the bathroom.

I will spare you all the details. I will only say that after HHBL paid the bill I suggested that we might swing by the ER. I felt that it might be wise.

And it was so good that we did. Saturday night is dicey for going to the local urgent care. We don’t live in a high crime area but you never know how big a back up there will be on a Saturday night. I was going to have a hard time if I had to wait a long time. Thank goodness they got me in fairly quickly. Giving them a “sample” was a toughie. And I would have just said that taking a look at it would have been sufficient to put me on an antibiotic.

TMI?

The very nice nurse, who needed a shave and looked like he had just come off a three day bender, sent it off to the lab and very quickly the news came back…

Give that woman some Cipro! Quickly! And throw some Pyridium in for good measure.

Pyridium, to me, is a wonder drug. It is now my new best friend right after HHBL. It is a “bladder anesthetic”. It may have other uses but I really don’t care about them. When Joel the unshaven nurse said the words “bladder anesthetic” I said,

That’s the drug for me!

Thank goodness he told me that it would turn my pee orange for the two days that I would be taking it. Otherwise I would have been back in the ER later than night. And wouldn’t THAT have been embarrassing.

But now it is Monday, and I am feeling a fair amount better. Thank goodness. Bladder infections are just miserable.

Doesn’t this whole story just make you ache to come to Chez Knit and party with us on a Saturday night.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Hurrah it is Friday!!! And it is snowing. Joy. Can you feel the sarcasm from where you are? So here are my weekly Quick Takes drivel. After you wallow in the idiocy that is my life make sure that you click on the pic above to be whisked, at the speed of the snow accumulating on my deck, over to Conversion Diary to see what everyone else has been doing.

And now……on with the drivel.

1. I am participating in a read along of all the Harry Potter books in anticipation of HPDH part 2 arriving soon at a theater near you in July. Trust me, I have read all the books before but it has been a long time for some of them.

I finished HP and the Sorcerer’s Stone on Thursday and was surprised to find, when I looked it up in my database, that it had been 10 years since I read it the first time. And I have to say that I had a difficult time at first just hearing the book in my head and not having the strong impressions from the movie intrude. I want to hear the book as I did the first time that I read it. Not that I don’t love the movies because we all know that I do, most emphatically. But I just want to concentrate on the books for a bit.

And to be reminded of how much I love them.

2. I am a belt AND suspenders kind of girl. I have all sorts of things backed up onto my external hard drive. All my pictures are there. Important documents are there. But, I also have decided to invest in having everything backed up to Carbonite.

Lets go to the cloud!

But let me tell you, this first back up is taking A…….LONG……TIME.

I knew it would, I do have about 20,000 pictures as well as all that other stuff. They tell you that it will. But I don’t think that I was prepared for it to take this long. It looks like it will take about 2 weeks.

Now, there have been some other computer issues this week and that may have slowed things down. I lost almost a whole day yesterday. And the more you are using your computer the slower Carbonite is backing up.

But I will feel so much better when it is all done.

So much better.

3. HHBL is a saint of a husband.

A saint. And I will say it again and again and again.

I am often not the easiest person to live with.

Cough, cough, cough.

I know that is hard for you to believe.

And this week, and perhaps for weeks before that, I have been a crabby and unreasonable mess. Impatient. Frustrated.

And he has just taken it all in stride. Which is how he is.

A saint!

4. I am sorry Mom. I killed it. I didn’t mean to. I treated it just like you told me to…….

But it is dead. Dead as a doornail. Dried. Withered. Retched in it’s forlorn and passed away state.

One day it was happy. The next it had been overtaken by winds from the Sahara.

I bow my head in shame.

5. I have started with a new book club this week, we met for the first time last night. This group didn’t really start out to set up a book club, my friend Michelle commented of Facebook, “Hey I am reading this book does anyone want to read it along with me.” and a number of us responded.It was great (Hi Elizabeth)! It has been several years since I participated in a book club and I have missed it more than I thought. What a great pleasure to be able to sit around and have some excellent discussion with others who have given a thoughtful reading of a difficult book. We are reading The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn and it has been an engrossing if sometimes difficult read.

6. I found it!! I thought it was lost!! I didn’t see it where I always keep it……..

My Gameboy!!!

We bought all the progeny Gameboys one year before a vacation to Mexico (this was obviously a LONG time ago). It was a brilliant move on our part I must say. They played in the pool and played with their Gameboys and life was glorious. Of course we had to make at least one trip to the grocery store to get more batteries. I learned a lesson with that and now make sure that I always have extra batteries with me when I travel overseas.

I have been playing endless games of Tetris Plus. I cannot stop myself. And I have remembered how abysmally poor I am at Tetris Plus.

But I cannot stop.

7. Do you ever get Blogger’s Block? Well I certainly do. I am struggling with it these days. What to write. Does anyone even read what I write? Does it matter if no one reads? Am I relevant? It may be a topic all on it’s own at a later date. Of course, it never helps that here at Chez Knit it is January and that means that we are deep into winter. It is snowing even as I write this and it is blustery and cold which also isn’t a surprise. Sometimes I have to force myself to sit down and write something. It is a good exercise for me but hard.

And when you encounter people in daily life who look at you and say,

Blog? Why would you blog? Is that a good use of your time?

And you just stand there, mouth opening and closing like a fish flopped out onto the beach gasping for air, looking for an appropriate and pithy answer. And all you can come up with it…..

Thursday, January 20, 2011

I am up early in the mornings. If you have hung around here for a bit then you might have guessed that. 5:30a-7a is the absolute best time of the day. If I had my way I would decree that all stores would be open this early so that I could get my errands done.

I have suggested it but no one seems to be listening.

At any rate, I was sitting at my desk this morning. It was dark outside. And I looked out my window…….

And saw the full moon, misted and shrouded by whispy clouds.

Wow, that is so cool. I wish that I could take a picture of it but there would be too much camera shake and it would be blurry.

And then I dope slapped myself and said….Tripod you dummy!

I grabbed the camera and the tripod, put on the telephoto lens, turned off all the lights in my office and opened the window.

Um, it was really cold outside let me tell you.

I had enough time to set the timer and the ISO and to shoot three pictures before the clouds slowly closed in and covered the moon up.

Why did I shoot it on the timer? Because, even when on the tripod it was getting a bit of “noise” when I would hit the shutter release. The timer worked great.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Well, another week has gone by. And here we are again on Friday. And again it snuck up on me. I was under the impression for most of the day yesterday that it was Wednesday not Thursday. Sigh. Remember, after reading my measly thoughts click on the pic above to be whisked, at the speed of the rapidly mounting snow pile at the end of my driveway, over to Conversion Diary to read the rest of the Quick Takes.

1. Well, we are back to being “empty nesters” around here. Enjoyed having all the progeny home at one time or another over the holidays…..

But I also enjoy having my nice quiet house back.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss Cartoon Girl, TMO and TSiL and Shoe Queen.

It just means that I don’t have to do NEARLY as many dishes.

2. It continues to snow here at Chez Knit. Snow and snow and snow. And now Forbes has conveniently told us that we are #2 in snowiest places in the US, right behind Denver which gets 60 inches of snow a year. Ummmmmmm, I don’t know where they are measuring but I can tell you this, here at Chez Knit we are flirting with 60 inches of snowfall ALREADY this season and we still have at least two more months of snowfall to go.

Snow and snow and snow and snow

3. It is that time of year again. I don’t make New Years resolutions but I do make knitting goals. I look through my “stash” and think about what I want to knit and then make a list.

Because, as they taught me in nursing school, if you don’t write it down then it wasn’t done.

I AM going to finish that sweater this year. Why is knitting sweaters so dadgum intimidating to me. I crank out socks left and right and I think those are probably more difficult.

I raise my fist, in my best imitation of Scarlett O’Hara, and say, “As the knitting god is my witness I’ll never me intimidated by knitting sweaters again.”

There now I feel better.

4.

See, I told you that I found a whole bunch of old pictures on my external hard drive. This is my cousin Anne. We are squeezing the kitties. Don’t you just love the smell of kittens. I wish I had one right now.

That so isn’t going to happen.

And Anne always was more well mannered than I. She is gently holding the kitten. Me, I have a squeezing death grip on the poor thing.

We are definitely going to have another installment of Pictures From The Crypt.

5. Oh yes, going back to #3. One of my knitting “resolutions” was to knit from my stash this year. I don’t have a huge stash, not like this lady that is for sure.

That resolution lasted about, ummmmmmmm, 3 days.

I bought yarn.

There is a reason I bought all this yarn. I swear that there is! I will tell you about it next week. And just so that I am totally honest with all of you. There yarn that you see in this picture? That is only about half of the total. There is another layer of yarn.

And it is lovely and soft and squishy and I can hardly wait to cast on.

6. I made rye bread for the first time ever this week. I thought, after it had been kneaded and was put in to rise that it was going to be an epic bread fail. That doesn’t happen to often here I have to say. The more I work with yeast breads the less the yeast scares me. But this dough wasn’t rising all that fast. In fact it didn’t look like it was rising much at all. I knew that i hadn’t killed the yeast with hot water because I don’t use hot water when making bread dough.

But then I realized that, duh!, rye dough doesn’t rise as fast or as far. I relaxed, it rose, I baked it.

And it was good. So good that we have eaten most of the loaf in a two day span. Once I have done the recipe a couple more times then I will post it along with pictures. You have to make it.

7. I feel very bad for our UPS man. He delivered a package to our house yesterday (thank you!) and left with a little present from us. Or more specifically a present from Max. You see, for some reason the UPS man decided to walk through the snow in the front yard rather than walk on the walk way. I am not sure why.

And on said walk he seems to have forgotten that we have a rather large dog. A rather large dog that eats a fair amount of food.

I cannot help that I am a dog and that the world is my toilet. I didn’t mean to leave the “gift” where the UPS man would step on it.

I bet THAT was a surprise a little ways down the road when his shoes warmed up.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Continuing in the same vein as yesterday. You know, the whole opening boxes and finding things and stuff.

When I was looking for My Sailor Hat to photograph for Monday’s post I was digging around in my “memories” box and came upon another blast from the past. Not my childhood but the progeny’s collective childhood.

Around Chez Knit, many a year ago, we were really into Barbies.

Really into them.

At one time it was difficult to walk without stepping on a piece of Barbie paraphernalia, or a semi naked Barbie for that matter. Or a Ken with only one leg.

Just as an aside, why did our Ken dolls always lose a leg? Every single one of them was disabled. It was sad.

But I digress.

We have three girls. All those girls had Barbies. Tons of Barbies. And you just can’t clothe all the Barbies in store bought outfits and still have enough left over at the end of the week to feed the family.

And I have a sewing machine and I know how to use it. In fact, sewing was my outlet at that time. It was either sew when they were napping or…….

Well lets just say that I understood why gerbils eat their young.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Move forward to present time. I am digging through my box and I spot something down at the bottom.

When I picked it up I started to hear the soundtrack from “The Little Mermaid” run through my head.

Wish I could be….part of your wooooooooooooorld!

Under the seaUnder the seaNobody beat usFry us and eat usIn fricassee

Sorry.

There it was, the last surviving “Mermaid tail” that I had produced for all the progeny. I think there had to be at least 3 of them at one point in time because heaven forbid that you weren’t “fair” and gave one to each of them.

I did a pretty darn good job with these if I do say so myself. It was my own design. Did they even make patterns for mermaid fins? If they did I still wouldn’t have spent the money on it. These actually did spend a great deal of time on Barbies in the water. The wading pool. The bathtub. The occasional bucket of water.

Here is Barbie in all her Mermaid glory. I did a bit of editing on this particular photo because, as was usual around Chez Knit back in the days of Barbie…..she didn’t have enough clothes on.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

These days I never know what I am going to find in my quest to clean out and get rid of and simplify. Every once in a while I open a drawer that I think is empty and I find something from my past, recent and not so recent.

I opened a drawer a few weeks ago and heard something shift, way in the back. I hoped sincerely that it wasn’t a mouse. You laugh but that has happened.

Remember….I live in the woods….and woods = mice. That is what they make Decon Mouse be Gone for.

Someday I will tell you the momentous story of Zachary and the Mouse. Otherwise known as “Hey I’m Management and I Don’t Have To Catch Those”.

But I digress.

So, I reached my hand gingerly into the back of the drawer. And I pulled out this.

A Marshall Fields box? Hmmmmmmmmm.

I have to digress again to my childhood. I grew up just outside of Chicago. And Marshall Fields just said elegance when I was growing up. If you needed something special you went there. If it was Christmas you drove into the city and had breakfast in their dining room at the main store downtown.

And the Mint Meltaways. OOOOOOOOOOOOO. If I could only have a box or five of those right now. And not the measly things that you find now. No these were the lovely good sized meltaways that just oozed minty chocolatey flavor and melted in your mouth.

I am drooling.

And I am really off topic.

Long flat Marshall Fields box. I don’t remember this thing or what could possibly be in it. It wasn’t all that heavy, not heavy at all to be honest.

Oh now I remember what is in here.

Gloves! I totally forgot that I even had these.

To be honest (as I always am) I have no idea what these particular gloves are for. They came from Orvis. They are made of a very light weight material and I still have no idea. I think and this is only a supposition, that they might have been something that I got many years ago when I was still skiing.

I don’t ski now. I prefer to WATCH skiing from the comfort of a warm fire. Preferably with a nice glass of wine at the ready.

And then there are these lovelies. And they really are lovely. They are definitely hand made out of very delicate cotton thread. We all know that I love to knit (although I think these were crocheted) and that I often use little skinny needles…..but just looking at these things makes my head hurt.

Beautiful!

And finally there were these beauties. These happen to be my very own favorite gloves from growing up. I am sure that I have a picture somewhere of me with these things on. I haven’t found it yet but I can tell you I found some other pictures that just HAVE to be in another addition of Pictures From The Crypt.

I love the faux pearl buttons on these things.

But now, after waxing eloquent about all these gloves.

I am sincerely glad that I don’t have to wear them to church on Sundays.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

I might have mentioned last week that I would tell you a small story. A little tidbit from my growing up years.

A tale of love…..

A tale of pain…..

A tale of disgust…..

A tale of revenge…..

The tale of my sailor hat.

I had a sailor hat. One that really came from the Navy. How I came to possess it (Pilot Man had one too) is lost in the annals of history.

I wrote “anals” first. I don’t think that is what I meant.

But I digress.

I had a sailor hat. I loved my sailor hat. I wore my sailor hat although I cannot find a picture that proves this. I know that there is one but for some reason I do not have it. Dad?

It looked like this hat. In fact it is this hat. This very hat. I wore it this way. I wore it with the brim down. I carried kittens in it. I wore it when I got up in the morning and all day long. It was precious and I loved it.

And then one day something happened. Something terrible.

Don’t be fooled by Pilot Man’s cherubic and innocent face. It is an act. And please ignore that amazingly loud plaid jacket. I bet that it glowed in the dark.

Pilot Man was definitely a busy boy growing up (not that he isn’t now cuz he is). We could long discuss the many times that he seemed to have stitches, mostly in his head, from running into something or whatever. And little boys love things like puppy dogs and dirt and sticks and worms and…..

Toads.

Pilot Man loved toads as I recall. They moved. They croaked. When you picked them up they peed. Oh he REALLY like that aspect of catching toads.

Wook Dewbie, the toad peeeeeeeeed! Hahahahahahaha!

Yeah, that’s nice Bobby. Now get away from me with that thing. I am playing with my sailor hat.

And one day Pilot Man decided that he would carry a toad around. And he needed a receptacle in which to do this. And he reached for something…

And it was my sailor hat.

Remember what I said earlier, the fact that when you pick up a toad it will often urinate upon it’s enemy attacker. It doesn’t do that right away. It waits a bit to see if this particular enemy will have the smarts to put him down before said urination can occur.

He put the toad in my hat. He carried my hat away. The toad thought about it for a bit and saw that he wasn’t going to be put back down. So he let go of the contents of his little toady bladder.

All over my sailor hat.

I was devastated. I was destroyed. I was disgusted as only a 5 year old girl can be.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Bobby put the toad in my hat and it PEED!

I waited for the retribution to reign heavily down upon Pilot Man’s little fuzzy head.

And waited…..

And waited…..

And waited…..

And when it became clear that there would be no lightening blot from the sky that would fry him. And that the parental units were just going to chalk it up to his “being a boy” and “it is only a sailor hat and I washed it for you”.

I took matters into my own hands.

And I pushed him down the stairs.

Hey! They were carpeted for the love of Pete and little boys are flexible and he didn’t get hurt…..that I remember anyways.

And then he whacked me in the head with a plastic hoe as we were playing in the sand box.

Oh sure, he was just whirling around all innocent like and didn’t really “mean it”. Yeah right!

But I did score a bandage on my forehead and an extra helping of Cherrios and a small scar that I could pull out for sympathy when it was needed.

But I was never truly the same because, despite washing, my sailor hat will always have a toad pee stain on it.

Noooooooo, don’t make me go in there! I didn’t mean to have the toad pee in her hat. I’m sorry!! I won’t do it again!! Nooooooooooooo…………